MC Fireside Chats – May 20th, 2026

[00:00:45] Brian Searl: Another episode of MC Fireside Chats, my name is Brian Searl with Insider Perks and Modern Campground. Excited to be here. We’ve got one guest today because everybody else bailed on us last minute, are on flights, or at the RV Industry Power Breakfast. Didn’t give us like a, an hour heads up, so we’re just, me and Jon are gonna hang out here and talk about his campground, do some interesting things, dive into some good conversation.

 So how you doing, Jon?

[00:01:07] Jon Thatcher: I’m doing well, Brian. It’s nice to be here.

[00:01:09] Brian Searl: So tell me, Jon what, briefly introduce yourself first before I ask you questions. Tell us who you are and a little bit about your resort.

[00:01:14] Jon Thatcher: Yeah, you bet. I’m Jon Thatcher, I’m the owner of Shady Oaks Camping Resort in Plattsburgh, New York. I’ve been an owner for almost two years. I purchased the resort, the campground in 2024, August 2024.

 And since then we’ve been, you know, deep in renovations and I’ve been doing my best to kind of learn the industry and get the campground back online.

[00:01:33] Brian Searl: So over here’s where I, here’s where I think I want to start. Let’s do a little bit of a deep dive, right? We don’t normally have enough time to ask one individual guest some of the questions that maybe the industry would like to hear and know about more when they’re, you know, because there’s so many people, I think since COVID, who have come into the industry, who have either bought or developed or, you know, are part of a larger organization who’s acquiring campgrounds.

 And as a result of that, and then what we’re going through with the economy, like, all the things have changed, and the people have changed, and the, and so it’s interesting to just kind of maybe pause and do a deep dive into an owner operator, especially one who’s come in with kind of a fresh perspective. Is that fair to say?

[00:02:10] Jon Thatcher: I think so. Yeah, definitely have a lot to learn, but new to the industry, that’s for sure.

[00:02:13] Brian Searl: But sometimes that’s a good thing, right? Like, I mean, we have, you’ll, you already know this or you’ve learned this, I don’t know enough about you to say which one, right? But we are in an industry that has been dominated by really the same people for the last 30, 40 years.

 And I’m not saying that as a bad thing. I’m just saying it because it’s, it is what it is. Or at least, at least the same type of people who are on the associations and in KOA and on the board of directors and those are really, really smart people. They’re brilliant.

 You know, nobody’s saying anything bad about them. But so it’s refreshing to be able to give a, you know, my small part and certainly there are other things that you’re doing and other operators and owners like you to give a voice to the people who have only been here two years. Because as much as you don’t know, there are things that your perspective, because you don’t know those things, might be refreshing for the industry to hear.

 I think. But we’ll find out together, right? No pressure.

[00:03:08] Jon Thatcher: We’ll find out.

[00:03:11] Brian Searl: So, but, but before we get to your campground, back me up. Where does Jon come from? How does Jon get, like, where does Jon begin his love of camping or his direction that might have ended up resulting in buying a campground?

[00:03:23] Jon Thatcher: Yeah, that, that question actually relates to kind of what brought me to campground ownership also. I I grew up in the Adirondacks in Ticonderoga not far from where Shady Oaks is located. But I spent my professional career mostly in education in the education reform sector, specifically working in charter schools.

 Most recently as a Chief Operating Officer for a small charter network in the Capital Region of New York. I left that role I’d been in that space for 15 plus years. I left that role at the very end of 2023, stayed on with the organization and consulted through the spring of 2024.

 And then all at the same time took a road trip. I wasn’t, I was new to RVing personally, but my parents have long been RVers. They travel south in the winter. We camped as kids growing up, we had a camper.

 And so it, it was a, I went on a road trip, fell, kind of fell in love with the culture. I was looking for something different professionally, ready to make a big change in my life, and truthfully was trying to get back to the Adirondacks closer to my parents who are getting older.

 And it just, the while I was on that road trip I, you know, I just bought a camper and bought a campground before I got back and found Shady Oaks was under contract before I got back into the, into the, into New York.

[00:04:38] Brian Searl: So we hear a lot of those, I wouldn’t say a lot. We hear, I’ve heard some of those stories before. We have some recurring guests on the show who both own individual parks and then own, you know, own or manage, you know, management groups that manage 20, 40, 60 properties. And I’ve heard the story before of especially I think it happened quite significantly during COVID of like, we, we went on the road, we found RVing, we discovered it, we talked about it, we decided that this is a magical thing that we want to, and I’m not minimizing it, I’m just wrapping it up, right?

 And then we just decided to, you know, we were renting an RV or whatever, and we decided to buy a campground. And I always think whenever that story comes out, I’m like, damn, I wish I had enough money to buy a campground. Where do you guys get all this money? I’m just like, hey, that’s pocket change.

 But I know it’s harder than that, right? But I’m curious, let’s back up to your childhood of camping with your parents for a second, right? Do you think that you would have ever been as interested in purchasing a campground if you didn’t have that experience of growing up camping?

[00:05:39] Jon Thatcher: Yeah, definitely not. I think there was something familiar when I got back out there in my own RV, like something that, you know, nostalgic that reminded me of the experiences that I had as a kid. And the, you know, spaces that we visit that felt like a community.

 Like there was something always happening at a campground. You know, even I grew up in a tourist town on Lake George, Ticonderoga is right on the north shore of Lake George. And, you know, the population of the town probably quadruples in the summertime because people visit.

 There’s a campground just down the road from where I grew up. I was always sort of like interested in what was happening there because it was, there was always a lot, there was a lot happening there, you know. You could smell the campfires as you drive by on the highway.

 So, you know, I don’t think I would have been interested in it if I didn’t feel some sort of connection to it, to, you know, what I witnessed and experienced growing up.

[00:06:28] Brian Searl: it’s interesting to me because we’ve done, like my company Insider Perks, we do lots of stuff, but one of the things we started doing recently is industry research reports and looking at like pricing data. And we released in, I think it was December of last year, maybe January, we released a report on Gen Z and how they approached camping and how they viewed it and how they were maybe a little bit less involved in camping out of the box than, for example, your parents might be or your generation might be or older millennials.

 I find that’s kind of the cutoff, right? Like I think I’m a barely a millennial by like one year or two years. So, but it’s interesting to me like, I think that what you’re saying led you to ownership of a campground is the same thing that is something that should concern the industry.

 And I’m curious if you agree with me, because I think that there are a whole lot of, and there are certainly exceptions to this, like we have a great, I was talking to, I can’t remember, I think it’s, it wasn’t Erica, I can’t remember, Ashley I think was the chair of the Ohio ARVC professionals, I kept calling it OARVC, that was their name a couple years ago before they rebranded.

 And she was on the show and I asked her the same question we were talking about the Gen Z report and how I said, you know, you are actively involved in camping, you, I don’t know if it was her specifically, right, but I talk to too many people and I’m old. But you grew up on a campground, you were in a generational camping experience, your parents either owned it or you had, like you said, you camped when you were a kid.

 You had that outdoor experience, you had the love of camping and RVing and tenting or whatever, right? Being outside, being connected to nature, which is something that generally in our American Western population, maybe even globally probably, seems to have declined in the last, let’s call it 20 years-ish, maybe, really 2010, 2011 with the advent of social media.

 And I think that is because we are no longer, this is my theory and I’m very unscientific, so you can tell me if I’m crazy or not, right? Because we are no longer bored. We no longer sit outside on the porch of the cabin or whatever and have nothing to do.

 So we don’t listen to the birds and we don’t notice the trees and we don’t see the fish or the osprey or the, and we’re just, if we ever have a second of random boredom, we pull out our phones and we’re not bored anymore. And I think that is, if we’re not careful, going to potentially contribute to the decline of the appreciation of the outdoor hospitality industry.

 I think there are other people that will come in through cabins and glampings that will probably make it fine, but I’m curious about your take on that.

[00:09:15] Jon Thatcher: Yeah I can see the risk that you’re describing, I think is real. I think the optimist in me wants to think that’s also the argument to build more campgrounds. There’s an opportunity there to broaden the appeal or I guess depending on how you look at it, narrow and remind people of what’s out there and what is, the great thing about joining a community at a campground, whether it’s as a seasonal camper or out on the road.

 Because I think to be honest, that’s what blew me away, I camped as a kid but not as an adult, and I know I don’t even, to be honest, I don’t really, I’m an owner of a campground, I don’t consider myself a camper. I I RV to travel.

 I’m a full-timer, I go south in the winter, I still hit the road, I get into as many campgrounds as I can to just get more ideas to bring back to my own campground. And I think what I’ve been blown away by is the people who are out there looking for the same thing as me.

 That are, there’s a community of people, whether they’re at Shady Oaks in Plattsburgh or any campground across the country I can find something in common with anybody I meet because we RV and because we’re out on the road camping.

[00:10:17] Brian Searl: Yeah, so then the question becomes like, how do we, I think the answer to your question is partially correct. What you’re saying is part of the problem, it’s correct. And that building more campgrounds, building more experiences is the way to provide something that enables those people to discover the outdoors.

 Whether that’s, glamping as a glamping only resort, whether that’s tents, whether that’s RVing, whether that’s something that is still coming with Marriott and who knows what else they’re gonna build, right? But the question is like what we found in the Gen Z report is that most of these Generation Z and Generation A and whatever, it’s not really defined by generation, younger millennials, right?

 But this age range that has been heavily influenced by social media, call it that, right? Helicopter parenting. Like I remember I used to be a kid, I used to crawl up a tree and fall out and I would twist my ankle or whatever. Like I feel like kids don’t do that anymore.

[00:11:09] Jon Thatcher: Yeah. I don’t know. But anyway.

[00:11:11] Brian Searl: so that we know that based on the research, and this is from psychologists and organize, like it’s not, that report was just a white paper, it wasn’t our own research, right? So this goes across industries.

 We know that they like the outdoors. They are interested in the outdoors. They want to get outside. But what we think they don’t know how to do is how to do that.

[00:11:33] Jon Thatcher: Yeah, that, that resonates. Yep.

[00:11:36] Brian Searl: Yeah. So how do we do that?

[00:11:39] Jon Thatcher: Yeah. And part of me thinks too there’s in some cases some, it could be an affordability component. If you look at the price of an RV today it’s a little bit, it’s intimidating to think as a younger person can I afford that? Can I do, it feels like a luxury, it is a luxury.

 But then on the other side of that, one thing that we’re starting to think more about is how do we get more, we just added or I guess renovated or got back online a bunch of tent sites. And trying now to think how do we market that to, there’s a demographic of people who are looking for that.

 And I think we have some really nice sites now newly available for tent campers. But this question of how do we get in front of people who are looking for that’s a different group and a different appeal and a different strategy than what I think we, we try to employ for, our RV, our typical RV campers.

[00:12:30] Brian Searl: I think your economic thing is spot on. I want to set that aside just for a second and we’ll come back to that, right? Because it is an important thing. I think that what we found in that white paper, and again, I’m just reinforcing that I’m old and forget things and it’s been like four months since we released it.

 But generally what I think we found in there is that there’s just a nervousness there’s a, because of social media and all the intangibles and the fact that any mistake that you make now lives online forever potentially shot by your friend or somebody that is trying to bully you or whatever else.

 There’s this fear of if I go outside, I don’t know how to pitch a tent, I don’t know how to get rid of bugs, I don’t know how to be comfortable, I don’t know how to whatever. And it feels like our industry is just assuming that what they want is Wi-Fi or whatever, tech, and they have, we are assuming that they have the same knowledge that we had or that our boomer parents had and that they grew up noticing the things that they didn’t grow up noticing.

 And so that the only missing gap then is just marketing to them when in reality it’s how do I ease their fear about coming outside. So I think that’s the first piece of it that I’m curious to hear your take on. I know I’m making you a psychologist, is that okay?

[00:13:49] Jon Thatcher: Yeah, I’ll do my best, but yeah, take it with a grain of salt.

[00:13:52] Brian Searl: We can do a psychiatrist too if you have drugs, I don’t know.

[00:13:56] Jon Thatcher: No, but the I think that’s a really interesting, it’s something I hadn’t considered, right? Because I have, I think from the narrow perspective I have and like the limited space of like, how do we, get more people to, to visit our campground, it’s, I do think of it, I have to this point thought of it as a marketing problem.

 But maybe there’s a bigger, what I like about it is it changes my definition of what’s the gap here and puts a lot more on our plate as a, as an organization, as a business to, to try to find a solution.

 And I, I would say anecdotally there’s some early day, like one of the things we did right off the bat was we not only do we have full hookup RV sites and seasonal camping, overnight camping, all that stuff, we have tent as I mentioned before, tent sites and we have a glamping tent.

 And the big picture thinking there from a business model perspective was we have to make this as accessible as possible and people want different things and what our mission is to build a community and how people access that is going to be different, right?

 But there’s some sort of, there’s core events, there’s core functions, there’s core things that doesn’t matter if you’re staying in a tent or staying in an RV or you’re here for the season or you’re in our, one of our glamping tents you’re, you can have, you, we’re all going to share whether it’s live music or whatever that event is.

[00:15:13] Brian Searl: Yeah, exactly.

[00:15:14] Jon Thatcher: So I hadn’t considered that there’s more than just like apprehension about our product holding people back.

[00:15:22] Brian Searl: Yeah. I don’t think that many people have, and I don’t, and I don’t mean, like I realize I’m walking a kind of fine line here and I don’t want anybody who’s listening to the show to say that it’s your fault or you should have considered this or I figured it out so I’m smarter than you, that’s not what I’m saying, right?

 I think it’s similar to like you grew up in a camping environment, if they grew up in their generational environment with their parents or whatever, or they went camping or they went RVing, like it’s hard to put yourself in the shoes of I’m a campground owner, I have kids, my kids have always been outside because I’m a campground owner.

 What do you mean Gen Z doesn’t like to go out? What are you talking, look at my kid who’s right next door to me, right? And so it’s hard to disconnect when you’ve never been exposed to what I think the majority of Gen Z is in cities.

[00:16:10] Jon Thatcher: yeah, hard to, and also hard to imagine what that’s, the perspective that they have or, there, people don’t know what they don’t know, right? 

[00:16:18] Brian Searl: Oh yeah, I don’t know a lot.

[00:16:19] Jon Thatcher: Yeah, same. Yeah. And so yeah, how do we, it feels like an access issue through that lens a little bit. Like how do we broaden, and there’s, to your, this comes back to I think your original point is like the, there’s some concerns here that maybe the industry should have about growing the pie, so to speak.

 How do we get more people to see the appeal of the business of this, I don’t want to call it a business, but of the industry, of the experiences that people have while they’re camping.

[00:16:48] Brian Searl: because it’s not a hard sell. Once you and I’m guilty of this too, like I’m what you would call like if it even exists a Xennial, I learned that on YouTube a few months ago, right? That, that weird middle ground between I think Gen X and millennial or whatever.

[00:17:01] Jon Thatcher: Okay, yep.

[00:17:02] Brian Searl: And so they call us this, at least according to a YouTube video that’s probably just as equally unscientific as all the things I’m citing. Basically like a, we started our lives, I was born in 1982, right? I’m 44.

[00:17:14] Jon Thatcher: Yep.

[00:17:14] Brian Searl: We started our lives without the technology and then we got introduced to the technology. So we had the benefit I guess, or the curse or whatever way you want to look at it of seeing both sides of the coin, right?

[00:17:27] Jon Thatcher: Yep.

[00:17:28] Brian Searl: and so I think it’s interesting to step back and look at it from that perspective of as I’ve looked at my own life and reassessed some of this stuff, because I’ve been building a business for 15 years working 100 hours a week because I love what I do.

 But I’ve stepped back and realized as I’ve started to finally go on more vacations because I’ve had a girlfriend for five years now and I need to do that apparently, I can’t just lock myself in the office. But as I’ve started to do this, I’ve realized like, I took, I, I studied this on the show before I think, but I took a vacation to Vancouver Island. I live in Calgary, Canada.

 I took a vacation to Vancouver, and we were walking along, my girlfriend and I were just walking along a beach in Vancouver Island and I realized at the end of that walk because I was worrying about a client who was complaining about their website that something wasn’t done on time, even though I have 30 people who are working there, they just, they want me on vacation, right?

[00:18:13] Jon Thatcher: Yep.

[00:18:14] Brian Searl: and I started to realize I’m not even appreciating the ocean. The beach that I’m walking along. Like it’s completely abandoned, it’s beautiful, it’s, and so I started trying to reframe my thinking around there and I just went to, I was in Key West for vacation for a couple weeks, but for three days we stayed after the Florida Alabama Campground Conference.

 We stayed on what was really glamping, a houseboat.

[00:18:36] Jon Thatcher: Yep.

[00:18:36] Brian Searl: That was like it was a catamaran, a guy tore down like the whole catamaran and then built a cottage on top of it and moored it off of the not in a marina, but 10 minutes away in the four foot water of Key West.

 So you have to take a boat to get to it, and once you’re out there, once they leave you and they take the you’re out there. You’re on a catamaran and you’re not, like you could call them in an emergency, right? But you’re, unless you want to swim, you’re not going anywhere.

[00:19:00] Jon Thatcher: Yeah.

[00:19:00] Brian Searl: and so there’s no Wi-Fi out there and I could turn on my phone, right? But then I, you sit there and you see the osprey and the waves. And what my girlfriend and I would sit out on the, they had a little wrap around deck he built around this catamaran, right?

 And we would sit there and point out, point the flashlight in the water at night and all the minnows would come and you’d just look at the fish and try to see the little ones would come and then the big ones would come and then they would eat the, and so it just, those things are what you don’t pay attention to.

 Those things are what and I think I’ve assessed that and been able to understand how I would imagine Gen Z feels about the outdoors. If they sat there with the flashlight and saw the fish some people would be like, that’s gross, I never want to do that again, ew, bugs, whatever, right?

 But I think the majority of people, 60, 70% of people would be like, sure, I could, maybe not look at the fish, maybe that’s not my thing, but I could look at the osprey, or I could look at the waves, or I could sit on the beach, or I could look at the trees, or sit by the river, or take a float trip, or do something in the outdoors that brings me closer to nature.

 It’s an easy selling point is what I’m trying to say. What we have to figure out is like, how do I tell Gen Z and Gen A and everybody who’s coming after them that this is something that is vital to their appreciation of the world around them.

[00:20:16] Jon Thatcher: Sure. There’s like an exposure gap.

[00:20:18] Brian Searl: Yeah.

[00:20:19] Jon Thatcher: Yeah.

[00:20:20] Brian Searl: and it’s hard because they’re, they want to be outdoors, but they don’t know how to do it. So how do you bring them into a campground when the marketing that you’re pushing out, not you specifically but generally as an industry at a macro level, just says the same thing it’s always said. Come camping with us, we have full hookups, we have tent sites, we have whatever else.

 But it doesn’t tell the story of the experience, and even if it did, the experience in many places, at least I haven’t found one yet, is not specifically tailored toward Gen Z and that problem.

[00:20:49] Jon Thatcher: Yeah. And what would that, what do you think that could look like?

[00:20:52] Brian Searl: Because I, I like this idea of one, one example I remember from the report, and you can download it on our website, it’s on insiderperks.com, it’s a free report, like you just gotta pop in your email or whatever, right?

 One example I remember from the report is it we suggested like lanterns, so like colored lanterns. Because there are some Gen Z who are shy and disconnected and not as social as, for example, we are or your parents are or whatever else, right? Because of that disconnection of social media.

 And so there are some who are interested probably in going camping who don’t want to talk to anybody when they go camping.

[00:21:30] Jon Thatcher: Yeah.

[00:21:30] Brian Searl: They want to be disconnected, they want to be left alone, they want nothing to do with anybody, right? This is the same type of thing you’ve seen with a, I don’t want to talk to anybody when I check in, just, like the boomers want to chat with people.

[00:21:40] Jon Thatcher: Oh yeah.

[00:21:40] Brian Searl: They want to have a conversation, right? But the younger generations, I just want to get to my site, like what, I don’t want to talk to you for 10 minutes about rules and everything else, right? Let me get to my site.

 so I think there’s some people like that, but then I think there’s other people who and maybe there’s an overlap, like where one person is okay, Tuesdays I want to do this and Wednesdays I want to do this, or today’s the day I want to be social or not. So there’s some overlap, right?

 But then there’s the other people who are like, I do want to go meet people because I’m having trouble to do this doing this in real life. And I understand maybe I don’t understand, but I’m slowly starting to learn because of the marketing that the outdoor hospitality industry is hopefully giving me, or the campground is hopefully giving me, I’m starting to slowly realize how much of a community potentially, or a lower barrier it is potentially at a campground to meeting other like-minded individuals such as myself.

[00:22:29] Jon Thatcher: Yeah.

[00:22:30] Brian Searl: And then like I need to have a way to do that. So the idea that, I think AI actually came up with it, right? But the idea was is the green lanterns, buy some lanterns from the store, put some either green paint on them or green tape, I can’t remember what it said, right? Green paint.

 And hand them to the people when they come in and say if you, and if you want to be social, turn your light on to green and everybody that walks by you will know that you want to be social. And if it’s off, they don’t approach you.

[00:22:54] Jon Thatcher: Yeah. Stuff like that, right? That’s interesting. Yeah. What it makes me also want to say is we, maybe this has been done already, but I think it’s an interesting question and how do we involve Gen Z in getting to an answer for that question?

 Is there, are there opportunities to survey, are there opportunities to do focus groups? I think, part of me also wonders if there’s differences in by region. I’m in the North Country region of New York, which there’s, I don’t, I’d hesitate to figure out the right words to describe what I think is different about the North Country.

 It’s, but there is, we’re all guessing here, so feel free to guess. Yeah, I it makes me wonder if the demographic data that you’re describing is true in the same ways in the North Country.

[00:23:39] Brian Searl: I don’t think so. Like I, I think it’s different. Yeah, I think it’s probably close because social media has such a reach into our society. Yep. But I think, and you can tell me if this is along the lines of your thinking, right? And I don’t, like I’ve probably driven through the North what cities does it include?

[00:23:55] Jon Thatcher: there’s some debate about that, but I’d say anything north of Saratoga.

[00:24:00] Brian Searl: Okay. So like I’ve been, like my, I’ve been to Buffalo frequently. My parents actually live in New York. They live in Olean, New York.

[00:24:08] Jon Thatcher: Okay.

[00:24:08] Brian Searl: In the middle of nowhere really, although Olean is I guess a city.

[00:24:12] Jon Thatcher: what’s it close, is that close, is that Western New York?

[00:24:14] Brian Searl: yeah, Western New York, yeah. Yep, yeah.

[00:24:17] Jon Thatcher: Yeah, I’m like thinking sort of the eastern side, Vermont border, I guess Watertown, that sort of, the northernmost, not Western New York, not Rochester, Buffalo, but like above Syracuse and…

[00:24:30] Brian Searl: Okay. But I wonder if it’s, and tell me if this is different because like I’ve been to Syracuse, I’ve driven up, that’s where you go up to Montreal, right?

[00:24:39] Jon Thatcher: Yep.

[00:24:39] Brian Searl: again, not super intimately familiar with that area like you are but what I’m imagining is that there’s probably a difference in the way, just like there’s a difference in the way a Gen Z or Gen A or younger millennial whatever would perceive camping if they had grown up camping.

 I think there’s probably a difference in how Gen Z perceives the outdoors if they grew up in New York City versus the North Country.

[00:25:03] Jon Thatcher: Yeah, for sure.

[00:25:03] Brian Searl: Is that where you were going?

[00:25:04] Jon Thatcher: Yeah, that’s exactly where I’m going. And I, because I, one, it’s like I look back at my own childhood, which again, I’m not that far behind, I was born in 1985, so span that gap too of like before technology and after technology.

 We spent a lot of time outside. I still think to a degree that’s greater than elsewhere, that’s still true here. Kids are more likely to spend time outside in small towns in upstate New York, for example, than maybe, certainly than New York City, right? Yep.

 But I, and I also agree with your second point that like the social media is, it reaches the North Country too. I, it makes me want to get more data of who are our, around our clientele, who are our guests and think differently about who are we trying to target and how do we broaden our market a little bit.

[00:25:50] Brian Searl: Yeah, I think that the problem with surveying, I think, and again I have not seen anybody do a really good survey of this. Maybe Scott Bahr could help us with that. He’s on a podcast with me actually live in 45 minutes when this ends. But he does KOA’s North American Camping Report, is the data guy behind all that stuff, if you’ve ever seen that report, and if you haven’t, you should go download it, yeah, it’s really good.

 But he, maybe he can do some research into Gen Zs and stuff like that, because I think that the limited data set that I’m assuming most of the industry is working on is we’ve got a lot of Gen Zs already in the camping industry, let’s ask them.

 Yeah. Their perception is not that’s the, like their perception is I just want Wi-Fi. Yeah. Because they already appreciate the outdoors and they’ve already grown up in it, right? And so I think we need to get a, figure out a way to get a perception from people who specifically say I’ve never been camping.

[00:26:39] Jon Thatcher: Yep. And why? Yeah.

[00:26:42] Brian Searl: Yeah. And then what would bring me in, what would make me consider it. And I think what you’re gonna, what I think you’ll extrapolate out from that, my guess is the curated experiences is the way to get them into it.

[00:26:52] Jon Thatcher: Yeah.

[00:26:53] Brian Searl: Is whether, and that doesn’t mean that glamping obviously is a bigger one, right? Yep. It’s curated by default. But even something as I have a tent site set up for you and prepared, I’ve pitched the tent, I’ve got the comfortable sleeping bag, there’s a mat under it to make you nice, right? There’s a zippered screen to keep most of the bugs out. You just have to come and just show up.

[00:27:13] Jon Thatcher: Yeah. That’s interesting. And we, it’s funny you say that because that is something we’ve started to market actually. We have a tent, we will set it up. It’s, I think it, the question is how do we get more people to know about the opportunity, but I think there is something there personally.

 And that I think from a hospitality perspective, I think that’s next level stuff. It just makes me excited to see who would be interested in taking part of that.

[00:27:41] Brian Searl: Yeah, I think it’s a huge opportunity for the people who are willing to think outside the box.

[00:27:45] Jon Thatcher: Yeah.

[00:27:46] Brian Searl: and I say willing, but I don’t, again, I don’t want to back myself into like people watching the show saying I’m willing, but what do you mean I’m not willing? Many people are willing.

[00:27:54] Jon Thatcher: Yeah.

[00:27:54] Brian Searl: But many people have never had the, is impetus the right word, or incentive?

[00:27:59] Jon Thatcher: Yep.

[00:28:00] Brian Searl: To actually need to do this at their property, which is eventually going to lead us into the economic conversation, right? But this, we’ve had boomers who have been the backbone of the camping industry and Gen X and millennials, I get this stuff confused.

 And older millennials who have been basically the backbone of the camping industry for the better part of the last 60 years. Since 1960 whatever when the first campground, when the first KOA opened. Which was a result of the Cuban Missile Crisis by the way. Did you know that?

[00:28:30] Jon Thatcher: No, I did not know that.

[00:28:31] Brian Searl: It’s actually not true, it’s completely fake. But it’s, the Cuban Missile Crisis was the same year as the World’s Fair.

[00:28:38] Jon Thatcher: Ah.

[00:28:39] Brian Searl: And it was started because of the World’s Fair. But like we were having, Scott and I were having a conversation with AI and I said, I bet if I repeat that enough times people will start believing it.

[00:28:46] Jon Thatcher: I was starting to believe it. Alright, I’m not gonna repeat it.

[00:28:49] Brian Searl: Yeah. But it was the World’s Fair. So anyway, so that but and those boomers, those generations have not changed what they have expected from a campground.

[00:28:57] Jon Thatcher: Yes. That is interesting. Yes. Yes.

[00:29:00] Brian Searl: And so there’s never been this impetus of I need to look at new amenities or new experiences or new ways of thinking or new curated experiences for tents or—

[00:29:08] Jon Thatcher: Yes, like that.

[00:29:10] Brian Searl: So talk about, yeah, go ahead.

[00:29:11] Jon Thatcher: That resonates with me because I, what got one of the conclusions I had walking away from my experience just before I bought the campground when I was on the road, is that campgrounds, it was clear to me that the demographic of who was out there in the spring of 2024 was maybe not who was camping five years before that.

 Because I, I had this image in my head that I was going to be on campgrounds with mostly boomers, and no disrespect to that, like people like my parents who I knew had been traveling south for years. And what surprised me was there were people same age as me, with families, without families, on their own, working remotely just like I was.

 50% of the people in campgrounds were, I would, by mental math in the same life space as I was in, which kind of shocked me. And then that made me wonder, what was, what campgrounds offered was just what they’d always offered.

 It was just what was true. It’s not necessarily what we wanted or what we needed from campgrounds.

[00:30:04] Brian Searl: It’s just what they’d always offered and what had worked. It’s the definition of a campground. A campground has mini golf, it has a swimming pool, it has a small grocery store, it has bathrooms and showers. It has, really well basically that’s it, right? What am I missing? Cornhole.

[00:30:20] Jon Thatcher: Cornhole. Yeah. And not great Wi-Fi and, the the my, the favorite, my favorite ones I went to had like bars and restaurants, which was felt like new and exciting, right? Places where people could hang out and gather.

 But again, it was this working theory of I don’t think this is actually what people want, it’s just what they’ve always offered. And so how, where’s this conversation about what camp, the campground industry should be and what people who, are participating in it, who are, customers or guests of our resorts, like what do they want in a campground?

 Not just what it, not compared to what they’ve seen in other campgrounds, but like blank slate, what could we create that like appeals to what people need and want today? And I think that makes it more accessible to the next generation as well.

 That would be my working theory, which is, we, I obsess a lot about business model because I’m, I think we, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of opportunities that are unique to our campground. We’re close to things, for example, we’re 10 minutes from everything in Plattsburgh.

 And but it, it feels like you’re still out, but you’re, you don’t, sacrifice, the opportunity to go to a Target or a Walmart or whatever you need, it’s 10 minutes from here. Which is appealing, it certainly was to me when I was thinking about where do I want to plant roots and build a business.

 I didn’t necessarily want to do it an hour from the nearest hardware store. But all that to say I do think there’s stuff that, that we’re gonna try and we’ll see if it works. But like a bar is definitely at the top of our list of like next additions to the property because it’s about, I think, creating spaces where people can gather.

 And I don’t want to consider this just a campground. I think when I’m like most inspired, I talk about it like it’s an outdoor hotel. And the places that like, we’re traveling, I think we offer certainly unique experiences because we’re a campground.

 But how can we be a place that whether you’re tent camping, glamping, staying in an RV, where there’s still these central experiences that people want or are looking for and need that we can offer.

[00:32:15] Brian Searl: I think this is probably gonna get me some hate email, but I, by saying this, right? I think you could make an interesting case for the following statement to be true. In many resort style hotels, or even, heck, you could even take a upscale Holiday Inn, right?

 In many of those hotels, there are often more places to gather than there are in a campground. Even though I never see anybody using them at a hotel.

[00:32:44] Jon Thatcher: Yeah. Yep.

[00:32:46] Brian Searl: There are meeting rooms, there are lobbies, there are chairs outside the elevators, there are, and we don’t really have, like we have, sometimes we have pavilions, and we have community fire pits.

[00:32:57] Jon Thatcher: but for remote workers, do we have a great space where people can set up a laptop and work? We are, that is the direction we’re moving. We, I can’t say that we do right now today, but I think by the time we open next season we certainly hope to.

 And that space will also be where we’ll have a bar and that ideally if we’re busy enough, we’ll have a coffee shop in the morning as well. But modeling that I think after what’s, what’s a good hotel lobby have? That’s what I want this to feel like when people walk into the space.

[00:33:23] Brian Searl: One of the places I was impressed by was not a campground, but I was in, I was down in the Keys and this is just a recent fresh memory, right? We stayed at a, I’m trying to remember, I think it was Pines and Palms Resort. It was from a Michigan couple came and bought the property. It’s one of the, like an older, not really a motel, I guess a motel style, right? But two little cottages next to each other.

 And they have 10 of those and they’re all, it’s right on the ocean, right on the sand, right? In Islamorada down there in Key West. And, not big enough to where you need to have a restaurant or a store or anything else like that. So like you just do things and you walk out and you’re outside, right? So I guess it’s a motel.

 And they had a little food truck coffee shop there in the morning. And they had a food truck for lunch that we didn’t get to eat at because we were out exploring, but was right there. Tiny little food trucks.

[00:34:11] Jon Thatcher: Yeah.

[00:34:11] Brian Searl: So in the morning, my girlfriend and I could just walk up, we could, or, wake up, walk outside our room, like three minute walk around the couple other cottages, right? And we’re at the coffee place and they’ve got espressos and lattes and everything else, right?

 That’s, and then there’s little chairs out there that you could sit at if you wanted to. We just, we went down to the beach and sat right by there, right?

[00:34:34] Jon Thatcher: Awesome.

[00:34:34] Brian Searl: because we’re in Calgary and we don’t have beaches here. Not real beaches anyway. And but I think that’s what you’re talking about, right? I, and I think sometimes a gap of do we actually need a full restaurant? Maybe not.

 but then do you just, like lots of campgrounds will get on here and tell you they offer coffee. That’s not the same thing as that food truck experience.

[00:34:51] Jon Thatcher: Yeah, that’s right.

[00:34:52] Brian Searl: and it’s not like you need a professional vendor, like you could buy one of these food trucks for whatever they cost, 20, 30,000 dollars, right? Little tiny trailers really, it doesn’t even need to be an actual food truck.

[00:35:03] Jon Thatcher: Buy an old camper. Yeah, 

[00:35:03] Brian Searl: and then you need to buy like a thousand dollar latte machine.

 and probably get some kind of permitting, I would guess. Like it’s probably harder than I’m describing it, right? But then just to have a staff member work it for three or four hours in the morning.

[00:35:16] Jon Thatcher: Yeah, the concept itself is not that challenging. It’s just a, it’s changing our, like veering from the norm which is what I think makes it a little bit intimidating. But there’s opportunity there.

[00:35:29] Brian Searl: and I think it’s just different. It’s just thinking about what is the experience look like. And maybe that doesn’t always appeal to everybody. Maybe it doesn’t even appeal to you as the owner. Maybe it doesn’t appeal to me as the guy who has the podcast and is doing the marketing or whatever else, right?

 But maybe it appeals to someone somewhere who will share this with friends, who will come stay with you, who will put it on social media, who whatever. I go downstairs and I look at I have a hydroponic garden in my living room, right? Nice little tall vertical tower or whatever that grows like 80 some plants, strawberries and tomatoes and stuff like that.

 And I’m like, and I’m thinking like, if I owned a campground, I would just throw a couple of those things in the lobby. And then when people check in, the people who want to talk to me anyway, because some people don’t, right? They could just take some parsley or basil or whatever they want, like lettuce, and just, like it’s just free, just take it.

[00:36:16] Jon Thatcher: Yeah.

[00:36:16] Brian Searl: and I just think that, like that doesn’t monetarily make me maybe want to come to me and stay, but it surely must enhance the percentage chance that I get a four or five star review from them in some small way.

[00:36:28] Jon Thatcher: Yeah. It makes the park memorable too, right? It’s like that’s unlike anything I’ve seen somewhere else.

[00:36:34] Brian Searl: I still remember the Traverse City KOA was one of the first KOAs we ever stayed at. Maybe not, maybe that’s not true, but like it was early on, right? 2011, 2012, right? When we were first starting in the business.

 And we were just starting to get into organic stuff. Like I had stopped drinking soda and lost like 80 pounds just by not drinking soda. Sure. And so I was starting to uncover this stuff and I was paying attention to a little bit, it was so early in the United States, like there was not, like I was born in the States, right? There was nothing in the States in the grocery store except for like your organic section was like 80% gluten free and that was what organic meant back then.

[00:37:08] Jon Thatcher: Yep.

[00:37:09] Brian Searl: but I remember going to the Traverse City KOA and they had local organic tiny little hotel shampoos from a company in their cabin showers.

[00:37:16] Jon Thatcher: Yeah.

[00:37:17] Brian Searl: And that still sticks out to me. Like I, I don’t know why, like who cares, it’s just shampoo and conditioner. And it was directly related to I know my life and my perception and the fact that I was going organic or whatever else. But whether it’s local or whether it’s organic or whether it’s whatever it is, it’s those little tiny things are not going to impress everybody. They’re not going to make people choose you necessarily over somebody else. But they’re going to make an impression.

[00:37:41] Jon Thatcher: That’s right. Yeah, it’s not what you typically see.

[00:37:45] Brian Searl: Yeah.

[00:37:46] Jon Thatcher: That’s, that gives me a lot to think about. As we’re just getting to this place now where we, I’m learning a lot about the lifestyle of an RV park and the last, 18 months, two years has been, whether I wanted it to be or not, the focus has been on infrastructure.

 Getting our water system, electrical and septic really in a place where now we are like poised for growth and can scale. And I don’t want people who stay here to worry about the things they count on. And so that’s been the number one priority. But the stuff you’re talking about is the stuff that I love daydreaming about.

 It’s what are the details that are going to make the biggest impact and impression on people? Because that’s those things matter, right? The really well managed parks have it. Yeah, it’s all in the details.

[00:38:28] Brian Searl: And I think it, right? And I won’t claim to be a professor of economics. I don’t own a campground because I’m not brave enough to do it, right? I just sit here behind my little mic and do marketing and whatever else and AI and all that kind of stuff, right?

 But like I, I have to think there’s some kind of business use case.

[00:38:46] Jon Thatcher: Yeah.

[00:38:47] Brian Searl: For like just, let’s pick something like towels in your cabin. Sure, I provide towels, but you provide the three dollar ones from Walmart that are scratchy and rub your face.

 Now I get it, there’s a counter argument and again, I led with I don’t know the economics, right? And I don’t know your style of guest and I recognize that people are sometimes slobs and will trash and ruin your towels and whatever else, right?

 But I wonder what the economics were if you actually studied it, and it would be harder to get this data because it’s not clear, right? But of the, here’s a fluffy towel, it does that change in some small perceptible way the review scores or the perception or the willingness of people to share things on social media.

 And if you take those towels, combined with the soap, combined with the hydroponic garden, combined with the whatever you want to do 60 other things that are so little, does that actually go from four to five stars?

[00:39:41] Jon Thatcher: Yeah. I, I’m, we’re willing to test that over here and see. I think that’s the kind of, it’s also this, the big question of what kind of business do I want to run? What’s my vision for something and like, where am I willing to negotiate and where am I not?

 But I think that like what you’re describing is aligned with how, we’re trying to think as we, we get to the next chapter.

[00:40:07] Brian Searl: Alright, let me give you a hard question.

[00:40:08] Jon Thatcher: Yeah.

[00:40:09] Brian Searl: Tomorrow somebody drops 5 million dollars into your bank account. Doesn’t want anything in return. What do you do at Shady Oaks?

[00:40:16] Jon Thatcher: I think, that’s a great, I love that question. I, we, I’ve got a, I think a pretty solid like three to five year plan that still really resonates with me, makes me like get moving in the morning. I think it’s move faster would be not my number one answer.

 I, in order to build like the experiences, I think it’s add, I think going running down that list, it’s the bar that I mentioned before and build out that space in a way that’s, it’s more than a bar. It’s like a it’s, it helps us build the experience or create the experiences for people that we want people to have while they’re here.

 And it’s a very much on brand themed like vintage camper is the bar where people sit, like sitting at an old camper. And it’s a, it’s on brand and aligned. So that central gathering space would be, is like number one on the list.

 I think the other, we have one glamping tent, I’d like to add five or six more. Again, like filling this vision of this outdoor hotel. But where I think we, our one tent has done really well and I think there’s data that says like more would do better. And so having more would bring more guests.

[00:41:24] Brian Searl: How would you design that? I don’t want to stop your plan in the middle because I want you to finish, but how would you design the glamping? Because we have done a lot of, we’ve gathered a lot of data, like we put out a 2026 Outdoor Hospitality Pricing Report. We published the OHPI, which is the Outdoor Hospitality Pricing Index every month.

 And we know that the average, and I’m gonna be off by a couple dollars because I don’t have all this memorized. The average glamping accommodation inside of a campground goes for I think 158 dollars a night. And the average standalone glamping property without, outside of a campground goes for 300 dollars a night.

[00:42:01] Jon Thatcher: Yeah, interesting. And that is aligned, that’s like what we’re experiencing too. But I think the opportunity though is about, are you just adding a glamping tent to an existing campground or are you, I’m starting to think about these, the different sections of our business as like businesses within one big business.

 Like separate businesses. And I think glamping is one of them because they do take, a different brain space or diff, there’s like a diff, it’s just very different. There’s things that are certainly similar and they fit within the business, but then there are things that like require in my limited experience, the, like my current working theory is like we’ve got to think differently about our glamp, the glamping experiences that people have, the ones that we and what kind of experiences do we want people to have.

 My, this is, it supports my argument of we need more of them to create like a glamp ground within Shady Oaks. So that we can leverage some scale. I think there is I’d invest in better, like better bathrooms that are more aligned with the resort feel that we want people to have or that people might expect as part of a glamping experience.

 Ours aren’t bad, they’re renovated bathrooms, but we could do better. I think the other thing that I see at other glamp, like the pure glamp grounds is like hot tubs as part of their accommodations. We don’t offer that, but I think that’s certainly something that we would be interested in considering as we like really dive deep into glamping and again trying to understand the experiences that we, that people want and like the ones we want people to create here.

 And certainly there’s some like quality things there too of if we’re gonna, one glamping tent was an experiment, like how do we outfit it, how do we furnish it, how do we do all that. But if we’re gonna do six or seven of them, it changes the formula and allows us to I think differently potentially about it.

 So yeah, I don’t know if that’s a full answer to your question of like how do we distinguish it, but my, the way that I want to approach it is it’s like we’re offering, they’d all be in roughly the same area. There’s like a village of these domes which is how, it’s why we placed we chose the placement for the first tent that we did so that we could expand around it in a section of the campground that will be fairly private from the rest of the campground.

 But I think part of, like I don’t want it to be totally separate. I want glamping to still feel like they’re part of the core experience of what it is to stay at Shady Oaks.

[00:44:25] Brian Searl: I think there are 10,000 different ways that you could make the experience different, right?

[00:44:31] Jon Thatcher: Mhm, yeah.

[00:44:31] Brian Searl: I think if you asked me to boil it down, and remember I’m the guy with no experience who doesn’t own a campground, so take with a grain of salt when it comes out of my mouth, right? I think if you boil it down to isolation. I think when someone, I think the difference between a 158 dollar a night average glamping site rate at a campground and 300 dollars at a glamping resort is if you can make somebody come into, yes they gotta go through a campground to get there.

 I think if you can make them when they step into their site forget everything else is around them, I think you can get 300 bucks a night. I think you can. And I’ll give you, I’ll give you examples of that, right? There was a, it’s maybe not the best example, I’m sure it’s much nicer now. There’s a resort or a company up here called Charmed Resorts in Alberta.

 And it’s the guy he used to do Playhouse Masters on TLC I think, he was the host of the show. And like he designed playhouses for Steph Curry and all kinds of other stuff, right? And so he turned and he started building these Charmed Glamping Resorts that are based on storybook characters and stuff like that. All custom built like in his own warehouse, it’s so talented, right?

 But we went and stayed at one of his resorts like, I don’t know, three, four years ago now, something like that, when he was just getting started. He only had I think one or one location. But we went there and it, and he had organized them all in like a village and it was really spaced out. But like you stepped into under an arch that was like a storybook kind of, right?

 And I’m sure it’s way better now like he was just getting started. And it was beautiful, but it was like, it wasn’t a complete village, but like it was organized in that way. And then you get to your accommodation and you could see your neighbor because he didn’t have trees built yet and all that kind of stuff, right?

 But your yard, at least our yard, was fenced in. So you could walk into a fence and then you had you were, it was a little bit of privacy. And so there was a hot tub out back that was a wood fire, but we could actually, like we never used it because you could sit in the hot tub and you could, your neighbors in the back were at their picnic table with a family reunion.

 I was like we don’t want to do this in the hot tub. But the idea is there is isolation. The other one was I remember we went to Ireland last September and we stayed at a, I think a guy, it was a, at his house, but he had a container home set up like down on the river, probably I want to say 180, 200 feet from his house. It was down a winding path on the riverfront.

 And he had so many hedges there separating his house and his driveway, it was down a little hill, that once you were checked in, you completely forgot this guy’s house was right there.

[00:47:01] Jon Thatcher: Oh wow. That’s cool.

[00:47:02] Brian Searl: And so I, but I think that’s, so all that is pointing to what I’m saying is I think the difference is isolation. Not necessarily that you are isolated, but that you feel disconnected.

[00:47:14] Jon Thatcher: Yeah.

[00:47:16] Brian Searl: I think that’s how you get the rate, the things. And I think that’s easy to accomplish. I think that’s a row of super tall hedges between sites. It can be that simple, right?

[00:47:22] Jon Thatcher: Yeah, I’m imagining them on our property, we could totally do that. The, I guess I would have assumed that there’s one thing that speaks to that gap is like how, and I think about this with our tent all the time, like we don’t, because we’re not strictly a glamp ground, like our website looks like a campground website.

 Our booking platform is a campground management software. There are differences. Yeah, and like it, it doesn’t, it feels more like a campground and less like a hotel than what I would want, right? And so that’s something I’ve wondered is is that holding back our bookings?

 We’re also booked, we’re, there are, our tents and our RV rentals are also on Airbnb and that does, for better or for worse is where we get the majority of our bookings for those. They don’t come through our platform. 

[00:48:18] Brian Searl: Yeah, I think it’s interesting how we define ourselves in the industry, how you guys define yourselves as campgrounds. We were just at the Florida Alabama Conference. We pulled some data, I did a presentation at that conference in front of everybody.

 And we were talking about how the number one word that’s used on Florida campgrounds home pages, and we went out, we scraped 1400 of these with an AI agent and looked at the stuff, right? Was community. Which is often heard in our industry, right? Community. All over.

 But Florida especially because they’re bigger, long term, whatever else. But we looked at then 100 reviews that we had pulled in for almost every private campground in Florida. And none of the five star reviews talked about community. So you’re defining it as community, but your guests aren’t noticing it as community when they leave their positive reviews. Which is a gap.

[00:49:05] Jon Thatcher: That’s a huge gap. That’s really helpful.

[00:49:07] Brian Searl: So that, that doesn’t mean, I’m not necessarily saying that doesn’t mean you should de-emphasize or emphasize community, but there’s, this isn’t resonating with them like you think it is. Or at least it’s not resonating enough to impact their five star review of the good experience.

 And again, that was Florida specific, right? I can’t tell you that extrapolates out to the rest of the country. We have that data sitting in a database, but I haven’t pulled it and looked at it. But those kinds of little things, how you define yourself. I don’t know.

[00:49:35] Jon Thatcher: Yeah. How do you, like this is certainly a battle. Like what we’re talking about is like a challenge right now of okay, we’ve got glamping tents and we’re a campground. I think the other place where I, this like similar thought comes in or challenge is okay, we’re a campground, we have seasonal camping and we have, for our, like overnight or transient, I don’t like the word transient, so we use overnight camping too, like short term stays.

 But like those are also very different businesses. Like seasonal campers are looking often, in my experience, looking for something very different than what a short term guest might be looking for. And, I don’t, I guess I’m curious if if you were me, like trying to again define this business that what I’m finding is it’s way more complicated than I think, complicated.

 It’s, it’s pretty straightforward and pretty simple, but there’s complexity here of appealing to the different types and defining the different types of the business to move in the direction I think, fortunately I think we’re getting it right, but I couldn’t tell you exactly, like how we’re doing it is not replicable and it’s, I don’t even think it’s scalable as we get more established, right?

 Where like people like the story of renovating the campground and that’s certainly been the biggest appeal. So your question is?

[00:50:49] Brian Searl: Yeah.

[00:50:51] Jon Thatcher: Good point. My question is like, how would you think about the different I guess what, these are the different offerings that we have. How would you market the business or how would you, if you were in my seat, how would you think about defining and maybe marketing, it feels doesn’t feel like a strong enough word, but the, associating maybe is a better word.

[00:51:15] Brian Searl: It’s interesting because we’ve actually been doing this for some of our clients. We have these things called Master SEO Plans, and we’ve been doing them for a couple years for people to get people prepared for where we think AI is going with discovery and how search is changing and, which is a whole nother thing. Google blew up and killed all the blue links yesterday at their I/O conference, so nobody’s really prepared for that.

 So we don’t have time to discuss that today. But I think what we’ve been looking at as part of those Master SEO Plans is we think campground websites expand from 10 pages to 30 or 50 pages. That doesn’t mean marketing copy, it doesn’t mean blog posts, it means more factual information in your website that AI agents can know about your website and thus then serve that information through voice or Alexa or ChatGPT or whatever else it is to the person, right?

 And so as part of that, we’ve been looking at what is the ideal customer profile for a campground and having a really smart, expensive AI model go through and what is, how does AI see my campground right now as it is, right? What is the ideal customer profile for that?

 Then break it down into five to six different buyer personas. Is it the single mom with kids? Is it the retiree traveling across the country? Whatever it is, right? And then you can actually, if you know how to prompt AI right and you’re using these really smart thinking models, you can say, okay, now act as a retired couple who is 66 years old traveling across the country. What would make you buy if you saw it?

 And it will narrow its corpus of knowledge down to acting like that 66 year old couple and it will tell you like what would resonate with me in Google Ads copy and email marketing copy and website copy and whatever else. And then we’ll build landing pages for traveling nurses or pipeline workers or whatever else, right?

 And then we’ll, and then we’ll take a conglomerate of that and we’ll make the homepage like appealing to all those different types of people in some small way.

[00:53:10] Jon Thatcher: That’s interesting.

[00:53:11] Brian Searl: So I think that’s the best way you can do it from a marketing website standpoint. I think AI is going to help a lot.

[00:53:16] Jon Thatcher: Okay.

[00:53:17] Brian Searl: Because AI is just getting to this point now where you can start to, it remembers things about you, it’s done that for a while. In Google you’re going to be able to already do they have a thing called personal intelligence where you can connect your Gmail and your photos and all that kind of stuff.

 The search box they introduced yesterday, you can upload photos and you can say find me a dress that’s similar to this, right? It’s changing the whole search experience. But as it becomes more personal, it’s going to be connected to your calendar and your YouTube history and your reviews and everything you’ve ever done.

 And everybody will give it that access. Everybody likes to say we want privacy. No you don’t, you want convenience. And so as it knows more and more about you, the data in return it’s going to get, the answer it’s going to give you when you search for campground near Plattsburgh, New York is going to be different for every single person on the planet.

[00:54:05] Jon Thatcher: Yeah, 

[00:54:05] Brian Searl: so I think it gets to a point where it knows that your person who’s searching is a long term or a short term or a glamper or whatever. And if you have the content on your website to appeal to that specific individual person to where AI knows you have the glamping tents specifically in a segmented area that’s isolated, that’s whatever, there’s enough facts about them, it’ll just give that information to that person because that’s all they need to know. And I think that helps you.

[00:54:32] Jon Thatcher: Yeah.

[00:54:33] Brian Searl: I think that’s the answer to your question.

[00:54:35] Jon Thatcher: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:54:36] Brian Searl: I hope it is, anyway.

[00:54:38] Jon Thatcher: That’s awesome. Thank you.

[00:54:40] Brian Searl: alright, we got a couple more minutes left. That was a pretty good episode for just the two of us, yeah?

[00:54:46] Jon Thatcher: Hey, thanks for having me. This was fun.

[00:54:48] Brian Searl: Final thoughts? Anything you want to share about your park or your plans or anything we haven’t, we’ve talked about?

[00:54:53] Jon Thatcher: No, I appreciate the opportunity to talk a little bit about Plattsburgh, the Adirondacks, upstate New York. Would love to have folks visit this summer.

[00:55:00] Brian Searl: I’m sorry you didn’t get a chance to do a live check-in. For those of you guys who weren’t watching, like before we started the show, Jon was like, I might get a live check-in, I might have to leave, like if that happens. I was like, just take the camera with you, we can do a live check-in with us.

 But yeah, thank you for being here, Jon. I appreciate it. Shady Oaks, like you’re looking like you’re having a good season, Memorial Day is doing pretty good for you?

[00:55:20] Jon Thatcher: Yeah, we’re, we’re waiting, there’s definitely going to be some late bookings, that’s the nature of the season as people wait out the weather, but we’re a little over 50% booked right now, so excited about the weekend.

[00:55:30] Brian Searl: Awesome. Best of luck to you. I hope you have a great summer season. Thank you for being here again, Jon. Appreciate everybody for joining us for another episode of MC Fireside Chats. If you’re not sick and tired of hearing from me in about 45 minutes an hour or so, I’m used to being a couple minutes late.

 In about an hour or so, I will be live on Outwired with Scott Bahr. We’re going to be talking about data, AI, some of the new Google search stuff that’s come out. And if not, we will see you next week on another episode of MC Fireside Chats. Thanks guys, I appreciate you. Thanks, Jon.

[00:55:55] Jon Thatcher: Hey, thank you.